Following the suicide of a schoolmate, six skyping teens find their regular session invaded by a malevolent troll intent on revealing their dark secrets.
Well, it had to be done. I guess the editing of this is extremely clever, and why not try it on a standard ghost story? Windows layered on windows, real time typing and clicking, octobox web cammery, buffering youtube vids, pixellating feeds. It's more pure than Open Windows, but still it doesn't work.
First problem is it's just boring to watch information typed out on screen, even when the deletes suggest the character of the typist. Second is that information jumps around so much you worry you're missing out. And the webcams are so tight on the characters that it becomes really stuffy, creating a constant desire for the relief of wide shots and physical interaction. At the same time I did miss well lit, full screen close-ups.
The director failed to take a lot of short cuts - I really don't need to see everything typed, to have characters say What? to a clear question that then gets repeated, and a few other things. I guess that's down to real-time realism, but hey - it's a ghost story.
The story is OK, similar to Smiley, but the characters do become really irritating. The main girl and her boyfriend start out sympathetic, and there is an overall decay as the secrets come out, but I wasn't really interested, and of course we had to have macho guys shouting and gurning in full "Game over, man!" melt-down. Some of it was down to the limitation of the form - how are actors expected to react in a skype scenario? - but please get some better dialogue.
Music very limited, couldn't be woven into the storytelling - so that cuts out half the usual effect of a horror. The computer squeaks and beeps didn't add anything. A couple of weak jump scares generated purely through silence/NOISE.
The one sequence I did enjoy and which really suited the form and the story was the chatroulette, so that's something to think about.
Overall, it's worth a watch if only to confirm the computer screen is not the movie screen. So far.
Well, it had to be done. I guess the editing of this is extremely clever, and why not try it on a standard ghost story? Windows layered on windows, real time typing and clicking, octobox web cammery, buffering youtube vids, pixellating feeds. It's more pure than Open Windows, but still it doesn't work.
First problem is it's just boring to watch information typed out on screen, even when the deletes suggest the character of the typist. Second is that information jumps around so much you worry you're missing out. And the webcams are so tight on the characters that it becomes really stuffy, creating a constant desire for the relief of wide shots and physical interaction. At the same time I did miss well lit, full screen close-ups.
The director failed to take a lot of short cuts - I really don't need to see everything typed, to have characters say What? to a clear question that then gets repeated, and a few other things. I guess that's down to real-time realism, but hey - it's a ghost story.
The story is OK, similar to Smiley, but the characters do become really irritating. The main girl and her boyfriend start out sympathetic, and there is an overall decay as the secrets come out, but I wasn't really interested, and of course we had to have macho guys shouting and gurning in full "Game over, man!" melt-down. Some of it was down to the limitation of the form - how are actors expected to react in a skype scenario? - but please get some better dialogue.
Music very limited, couldn't be woven into the storytelling - so that cuts out half the usual effect of a horror. The computer squeaks and beeps didn't add anything. A couple of weak jump scares generated purely through silence/NOISE.
The one sequence I did enjoy and which really suited the form and the story was the chatroulette, so that's something to think about.
Overall, it's worth a watch if only to confirm the computer screen is not the movie screen. So far.